Possible Disruption in GCC Telecom

International cable provider FLAG will be working to repair a fault on a cable between Suez and Bombay on Nov. 4 between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Bahrain’s Batelco has already confirmed a possible disruption to telecom and Internet services, but telecoms in all GCC countries utilize FLAG’s services. Some telecoms may attempt to switch certain services normally handled by FLAG to satellite connections.

However, GCC companies with extensive international business should plan to work around Nov. 4, planning essential communication either before or after that date.

It is expected that the outage will mainly affect customers using fixed lines to make international calls and using prepaid cards. Internet services will also be affected and it is recommended that Internet users give more priority to applications like browsing and e-mail which consume relatively less bandwidth than other applications such as file sharing which requires more bandwidth per user.

Bahrain’s Fixed Wireless Services Auction

Bahrain’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has published the invitation to tender (ITT) document relating to the forthcoming auction of two national fixed wireless services (NFWS) licenses that will use spectrum in the 3.5GHz range. The two frequency licenses to be granted with the NFWS licenses authorize use of the following spectrum:

Frequency License I: 3410MHz-3455MHz paired with 3500MHz-3545MHz.

Frequency License II: 3455MHz-3500MHz paired with 3545MHz-3590MHz.

In accordance with the timetable for the auction process, which is set out in the ITT, Nov. 28, 2006, is the final date for receipt of bids and Dec. 13, 2006, is the date for the announcement of the winners. The full ITT is available on the TRA website (www.tra.org.bh). The TRA has set the starting price of the auction of each license at 20,000 Bahraini dinars, taking into account that the prospective licensees will also have to pay annual fees of 28,000 Bahraini dinars to the Ministry of Transportation for the use of the spectrum.

HP to Acquire VoodooPC

HP has signed a definitive agreement to acquire VoodooPC, a designer and manufacturer of high-performance and personalized gaming computer systems, to extend its presence in the high-performance gaming market. Following the close of the transaction, HP will form a separate business unit within its Personal Systems Group focused on the gaming industry. VoodooPC co-owner Rahul Sood will become chief technologist for the unit and co-owner Ravi Sood will become the unit’s director of strategy. Both executives will report to Phil McKinney, who will become general manager of the gaming business unit while maintaining his current role as chief technology officer of HP’s Personal Systems Group.

Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, VoodooPC has been dedicated to delivering leading-edge performance, style and craftsmanship to discerning PC enthusiasts. The acquisition, once closed, will extend HP’s presence into the high-performance gaming market and globally expand the reach of the VoodooPC brand. For more information on VoodooPC or to customize a machine, visit www.voodoopc.com.

NEC Completes Packard Bell Sale

NEC Corporation has completed the sale of Packard Bell B.V. (PB), a 100 percent wholly-owned subsidiary of NEC, to companies controlled by John Hui, the former owner of e-Machines. Under the Packard Bell brand, PB carries out extensive business in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and South America focused on the sale of consumer PCs. It has also been extending its business domain to digital home electronics, such as MP3 and DVD players, as well as GPS, continuing to grow as a consumer electronics enterprise.

Workers Overwhelmed by Information Overload

The growth in content and content sources combined with a lack of effective search tools contribute to lower employee productivity, a new study by Nucleus Research and KnowledgeStorm finds. Two out of three employees are overwhelmed by information overload, with more than a quarter spending in excess of five hours per week searching for the information they need to do their jobs.

“While the amount of data continues to increase, it’s the number of sources employees must search to find and verify information that is dragging down productivity the most,” said Cheryl Gutowski, research analyst at Nucleus Research. “The greater the number of haystacks to search and the higher the complexity, the more productive time that is lost. We found desktop search was not solving the problem, as 95 percent of the people we surveyed were already using desktop search tools.”

Half of all employees search more than five document repositories to find the information they need, according to the study. Many organizations have multiple content repositories, e-mail databases, records management solutions and shared folders — often as a result of mergers and acquisitions, disparate departmental initiatives and lack of internal organization. This creates multiple duplications of content.

The study recommends other strategies to simplify employee access to data. They include:

• Migration of content to fewer repositories;

• Enterprise indexing and search applications;

• Middleware and service-oriented architecture (SOA) technology to integrate content repositories at the application layer;

• Content management systems.